Staff Reports
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 30, 1998

Note for note

Wynton Marsalis was never the disgruntled music director on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." That was his brother, Branford. Wynton, well, he's the legit Marsalis, the heir to the jazz trumpet throne. A Miles Davis for a much less exciting generation of jazz musicians.

At 6, Marsalis, son of a musician, picked up the trumpet. By 18, before entering Julliard, he had already played with the New Orleans Civic Orchestra.

Despite initial performance forays with Davis-influenced artists like Herbie Hancock, classical music has been a major part of Marsalis' career as a jazz musician.

Though Marsalis was the youngest musician to win the Grammy award for jazz solo performance three years in a row, he is also the first person to take home the music industry's top honors for both jazz and classical music.

From public television programs to books, to his work as Artistic Director of Jazz at the Lincoln Center, Marsalis has earned a reputation not only as a musician but as an ambassador of music, working to make instrumental work more accessible to audiences worldwide.

Marsalis brings his latest classical collaboration to Centennial Hall tomorrow as part of UApresents 1997-98 season. The work, "Marsalis/Stravinsky," features the trumpet player along with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, directed by David Shifrin.

The production premiered in Michigan in April and is gearing up for a stint at Lincoln Center May 8.

Marsalis and the chamber music entourage will be performing composer Igor Stravinsky's 1918 "L'Histoire du Soldat," the story of a soldier who trades his soul for a magic fiddle, a la Charlie Daniels.

The work, Stravinsky wrote at the time, was itself influenced by the jazz and ragtime tunes that the composer had read, but not heard.

The music will be narrated by 1997 Tony-award-nominated actor André De Shields.

The Lincoln Center's chamber music society has itself worked to expand the genre, giving modern composers a place to have their works produced.

David Shifrin, the society's artistic director is a well known clarinetist.

The evening also includes the premiere of a new Marsalis work, "A Fiddler's Tale," which was written for the same assemblage of clarinet, bassoon, trombone, violins, bass, percussion and trumpet.

University of Arizona Professor Ed Reid begins the evening's festivities leading a discussion of the program in Douglass, Room 101 at 7:15. The performance starts at 8 p.m.

Tickets for "Marsalis/Stravinsky" are $25, $31 and $39, half-price for students with ID and children under 18, and are available at the Centennial Hall box office. Admission to the pre-performance discussion is free.